When James Agee and Walker Evans published “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” in 1941, their honest and vivid portrayal of the lives of share croppers in rural Alabama put faces and voices to the Depression.

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By Susie Stooksbury/Special to The Oak Ridger

Oakridger - Oak Ridge, TN

By Susie Stooksbury/Special to The Oak Ridger

Posted Jul. 16, 2013 at 6:09 PM

By Susie Stooksbury/Special to The Oak Ridger

Posted Jul. 16, 2013 at 6:09 PM

OAK RIDGE

When James Agee and Walker Evans published “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” in 1941, their honest and vivid portrayal of the lives of share croppers in rural Alabama put faces and voices to the Depression. It was a work unlike any other, bringing with it a new kind of journalism. Yet Fortune magazine had originally commissioned Agee and Evans to go to Alabama in 1936 to report on the effects of the Depression. That article was rejected, then buried among Agee's papers until it was discovered by the archivists at the University of Tennessee in 2005. “Cotton Tenants: Three Families (976.100)” hallmarks Agee’s fine writing and is illustrated, just as its more famous followup, by Walker Evans’ award-winning photographs.

In 1954, Christchurch, New Zealand, was rocked by the seemingly senseless murder of Honora Parker only to be shocked even further when Honora’s teenage daughter Pauline and Pauline’s closest friend, Juliet Hulme, were arrested for the crime. The trial caused a major sensation, especially since the girls showed no remorse for their deed. Former barrister Peter Graham fills in the details of the story, including how Hulme reinvented herself into one of our most popular mystery writers, in “Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century” (364.152).

Working for the New York City Police Department as a transcriptionist, Rose knows first-hand the dark side of life in the 1920s from the confessions she types all day. An orphan raised by nuns, she also knows she wants no part of that life — until Odalie is hired to help with the workload. The glamorous young woman lives in a posh hotel, wears wonderful clothes, and frequents speakeasies — and she soon becomes Rose’s new best friend. As she falls more deeply into Odalie’s life, Rose ignores the lies and inconsistencies surrounding her enigmatic friend — until it is too late. Suzanne Rindell makes her intriguing fiction debut with “The Other Typist.”

“The Woman Upstairs,” Claire Messud’s latest novel, is receiving a lot of critical acclaim. It follows Nora Eldridge, a woman in her 40s who has angrily settled for life as a third-grade teacher rather than the artist she had always dreamed of becoming. Like Suzanne Rindell's heroine, Nora becomes enthralled with the exotic life of another. For Nora, it is the Shahid family who moves into her complex: Skander who is on a one-year fellowship at Cambridge, his Italian wife Sirena who is an artist, and their young, enchanting son Riza who is one of her students. As the Shahids find Nora more and more useful, she begins to build expectations about their relationship — expectations that cannot be fulfilled.

In West Virginia, Harman Coal Co. owner Hugh Caperton was fraudulently forced out of business by Donald Blankenship whose company, Massey Energy, was a major employer in the state. Caperton hired two lawyers, Dave Fawcett and Bruce Stanley, who helped him win his suit against Blankenship. In return, Blankenship set out to buy a judge on the state Court of Appeals. Caperton, Fawcett, and Stanley eventually took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court — and Blankenship has yet to pay the settlement. Laurence Leamer fills in the details in “The Price of Justice” (346.022) “a true story of greed and corruption” more unbelievable than fiction.

Page 2 of 2 - Juicy tales about the fabulously wealthy are always fun to read. Kevin Kwan makes his fiction debut with a doozy. Invited by her boyfriend Nick Young to spend the summer with his family in Singapore, Rachel Chue, an American-born Chinese (or “ABC”), looks forward to spending the time with this intelligent professor she already loves deeply. What she doesn’t realize is that Nick is heir to one of the world’s wealthiest families. She soon finds herself in the bizarre world of “Crazy Rich Asians” whose over-the-top lives begin to revolve around who Nick should — and shouldn’t — marry.